Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Rumsfeld Remarks Out-Satirizes Blogosphere

"Rumsfeld rebuked China at a regional security conference in Singapore, saying it was pouring huge resources into its military and buying large amounts of sophisticated weapons despite facing no threat from any other country."

I've read about 4 articles on this Rummy speech and each time I have to rub my eyes, shake vigorously, and do a triple-take. The U.S. Defense Secretary, overseeing gigantic budget increases in the military, where so much money is flowing that double-digit-billion dollar truckloads of cash in Iraq can disappear and no one knows why; this secretary is scolding China for over-spending??

CNN won't even mention the compartive spending of the two countries, probably for fear of pissing off conservatives with the truth; but most reports suggests China spends between $50 billion and $70 billion (China says less), and the U.S. openly reports 400 billion.

The neocons wonder why the world thinks Bush wants to maintain superpower status by force? They wonder why people take the Bush doctrine at its word, which says the mission of the United States is to prevent any change in the unipolar dominance of the U.S. using force, regardless of the benevolence of future challengers (not including China, here) ?

Now, the fact China is putting up missiles across the bay from Taiwan is real problem, and here I agree with Der Rummy's alarm. But the Bushies have already signed off on whoring out our entire manufacturing and textile industries to China. The eventual weakening and destruction of the Taiwanese economy is almost as assured as our own. Is Rummy ready to tell Bush his China policies make us less secure?